Grizzie ceased, and the others were silent, for the old legend had touched the deepest in them.
Many years after, Cosmo discovered that she had not told it quite right, for having been brought up in the Lowlands, she did not thoroughly know the ancient customs of the Highlands. But she had told it well after her own fashion, and she could not have had a fitter audience. [Footnote: See Mrs. Grant’s Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders.]
“It’s whiles i’ the storm, whiles i’ the desert, whiles i’ the agony, an’ whiles i’ the calm, whaurever he gets them richt them lanes, ’at the Lord visits his people—in person, as a body micht say,” remarked the laird, after a long pause.
Cosmo did not get well so fast as he had begun to expect. Nothing very definite seemed the matter with him; it was rather as if life itself had been checked at the spring, therefore his senses dulled, and his blood made thick and slow. A sleepy weariness possessed him, in which he would lie for hours, supine and motionless, desiring nothing, fearing nothing, suffering nothing, only loving. The time would come when he must be up and doing, but now he would not think of work; he would fancy himself a bird in God’s nest—the nest into which the great brother would have gathered all the children of Jerusalem. Poems would come to him—little songs and little prayers—spiritual butterflies, with wings whose spots matched; sometimes humorous little parables concerning life and its affairs would come; but the pity was that none of them would stay; never, do what he might, could he remember so as to recall one of them, and had to comfort himself with the thought that nothing true can ever be lost; if one form of it go, it is that a better may come in its place. He doubted if the best could be forgotten. A thing may be invaluable, he thought, and the form in which it presents itself worth but little, however at the moment it may share the look of the invaluable within it. But happy is the half-sleeper whose brain is a thoroughfare for lovely things—all to be caught in the nets of Life, for Life is the one miser that never loses, never can lose.
When he was able to get up for a while every day, Grizzie yielded a portion of her right of nursing to Aggie, and now that he was able to talk a little, the change was a pleasant one. And now first the laird began to discover how much there was in Aggie, and expressing his admiration of her knowledge and good sense, her intellect and insight, was a little surprised that Cosmo did not seem so much struck with them as himself. Cosmo, however, explained that her gifts were no discovery to him, as he had been aware of them from childhood.
“There are few like her, father,” he said. “Mony’s the time she’s hauden me up whan I was ready to sink.”
“The Lord reward her!” responded the laird.
All sicknesses are like aquatic plants of evil growth: their hour comes, and they wither and die, and leave the channels free. Life returns—in slow, soft ripples at first, but not the less in irresistible tide, and at last in pulses of mighty throb through every pipe. Death is the final failure of all sickness, the clearing away of the very soil in which the seed of the ill plant takes root and prevails.
By degrees Cosmo recovered strength, nor left behind him the peace that had pervaded his weakness. The time for action was at hand. For weeks he had been fed like the young ravens in the nest, and, knowing he could do nothing, had not troubled himself with the useless how ; but it was time once more to understand, that he might be ready to act. Mechanically almost, he opened his bureau: there was not a penny there. He knew there could not be—except some angel had visited it while he lay, and that he had not looked for. He closed it, and sat down to think. There was no work to be had he knew of; there was little strength to do it with, had there been any. As the spring came on, there would be labour in the fields, and that he would keep in view, but the question was of present or all but present need. One thing only he would not do. There were many in the country around on friendly terms with his father and himself, but his very soul revolted from any endeavour to borrow money while he saw no prospect of repaying it. He would carry the traditions of his family no further in that direction. Literally, he would rather die. But rather than his father should want, he would beg. “Where borrowing is dishonest,” he said to himself, “begging may be honourable. The man who scorns to accept a gift of money, and does not scruple to borrow, knowing no chance of repaying, is simply a thief; the man who has no way of earning the day’s bread, has a divine right to beg .” In Cosmo’s case, however, there was this difficulty: he could easily make a living of some sort, would he but leave his father, and that he was determined not to do. Before absolute want could arrive, they must have parted with everything, and then he would take him to some city or town, where they two would live like birds in a cage. No; he was not ready yet to take his pack and make the rounds of the farm-houses to receive from each his dole of a handful of meal! Something must be possible! But then again, what?
Once more he fell a thinking; but it was only to find himself again helplessly afloat where no shore of ways or means was visible. Nothing but beggary in fact, and that for the immediate future, showed in sight. Could it be that God verily intended for him this last humiliation of all? But again, would such humiliation be equal to that under which they had bowed for so many long years—the humiliation of owing and not being able to pay? What a man gives, he gives, but what a man lends, he lends expecting to be repaid! A beggar may be under endless obligation, but a debtor who cannot pay is a slave! He may be God’s free man all the while—that depends on causes and conditions, but not the less is he his fellow’s slave! His slavery may be to him a light burden, or a sickening misery, according to the character of his creditor—but, except indeed there be absolute brotherhood between them, he is all the same a slave!